Romance-speaking Africa


Official languagesFrench, Portuguese and Spanish
Member states27

Romance-speaking Africa or Latin Africa consists of the countries and territories in Africa whose official or main languages are Romance ones, and countries which have significant populations that speak Romance languages: French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian.
Many of these countries are members of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie or the Community of Portuguese Language Countries , and seven are members of the Latin Union.
North Africa, from Morocco to Egypt, was part of the Roman Empire. As a result, the African Romance language evolved in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. It was spoken until the 13th century.

French language

The following is a list of the Sub-Saharan African countries where French or African French is spoken.
The French Language is also spoken in two French Overseas Departments:
African countries where Portuguese is spoken:
Portuguese territory, geographically located in Africa, where Portuguese is spoken
Sub-Saharan African countries where Spanish is spoken:
Spain territories in Africa :
In North Africa there are countries where French, Spanish or Italian are spoken, but they are neither the main nor the official languages:
,,, and conserve Italian as a colonial legacy;
Somalia had Italian as its cultural language in universities up to 1991; however, the Italian language remains unknown to over 95% of the population. In Libya, Italians were forced to leave the country after its independence. The presence of Italian is limited in Ethiopia as Italian rule lasted only 5 years from 1936 to 1941.
In all of these countries, the only one that preserves Italian is Eritrea, which has only one Italian-language school remaining, with 470 pupils yearly. The name of the only Italian-language school in Eritrea is Scuola Italiana di Asmara. Somalia once decreed that the republic's official languages would be the registers of Somali as well as Arabic, deleting Italian's official status.
Italian islands geographically in Africa: